Edward Said on the Prospects of Peace in Palestine and Israel

by Leblanc, John Randolph

• ISBN13: 9781137008466
• ISBN10: 1137008466
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-11-12
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In this new work of political theory, John Randolph LeBlanc examines the political oeuvre of critic and activist Edward Said and concludes that Said preferred "reconciliation" to segregation in Palestine/Israel. LeBlanc argues that, for Said, the path to reconciliation requires recognizing the complex, intertwined positions of self and other in the region. Said's criticism speaks to the importance of negotiating the troubling, proximate, and unsettling presence of our most perplexing others; it suggests that peace will come not from rearranging geographies but from working through the aftereffects of exile and learning to share the deeply contested space. Forbearance and recognition, not separation, make reconciliation possible between two 'communities of suffering."

Author Biography

John Randolph LeBlanc is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Tyler, USA, where he teaches political philosophy and public law. He is author of Ethics and Creativity in the Political Thought of Simone Weil and Albert Camus (2004) and co-author, with Carolyn M. Jones Medine, of Ancient and Modern Religion and Politics: Negotiating Transitive Spaces and Hybrid Identities (2012).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Democratic Aspirations, Democratic Ambiguities
2. Unsettling Attachments and Unsettled Places
3. Separation and the 'Exile as Potentate'
4. The 'Exile as Traveler': Exodus and Reconciliation
5. Articulating Presence, Narrating Detachment